Weekend of May 25-26, 2024

Dear Friends,

Most of you at this point have heard the news about the priest changes here at Saint Timothy’s and Saint Bartholomew’s.  I have been appointed by Archbishop Perez as Pastor of Saint Peter Parish in West Brandywine (Honeybrook), Chester County. Father Lane has been appointed Parochial Administrator of Saint Martin of Tours Parish on Oxford Circle. The new Pastor of Saint Timothy’s and Parochial Administrator of Saint Bartholomew’s is Father John Hutter, and the new part-time Parochial Vicar (Assistant Pastor) here is Father Celestine Madubuko (Father Madubuko is part-time Parochial Vicar because he is also the Chaplain to the Igbo Community in the Archdiocese).

Change is never easy, but it is the one constant in life upon we which we can all depend. For us as priests and religious, it is a reality that we face more than most people. I have said many times, however, that change in our lives as priests goes hand-in-hand with the promise of obedience that we make to the bishop on the day of our ordination. 

At the ordination, the man about to be ordained a priest places his folded hands between the hands of the ordaining bishop, and the following dialogue takes place:

BISHOP:         Do you promise respect and obedience to me and my successors?
ORDINAND:  I do.
BISHOP:         May God, who has begun this good work in you, bring it to fulfillment.

In making this promise of obedience to the person of the bishop, the priest is really making his obedience to Christ and the Church. It is in our obedience that we most imitate Christ. Christ was obedient to the Father, and it was in his total obedience to the Father’s will that the salvation of the world could be accomplished. The following passage from the Letter to the Hebrews is often used as the second reading at liturgies for the ordination of priests:

Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered, and when he was perfected, he became the source of eternal life to all who obey him, designated by God as high priest, according to the order of Melchizedek. (Hebrews 5:8-9)

When we as priests are missioned to a new assignment, it isn’t easy, but in the missioning, in the call, we hear the voice of Christ, and so we go, in imitation of his obedience to the Father. And we go with the assurance that Christ goes with us always, to bear us up, to strengthen us, and to give us hope.

After eleven years as your Pastor, I take with me all of the many blessings I have received from Saint Timothy’s over the course of all this time, as I know Father Lane brings many blessings with him after his two years with us (two very important and formative years for him, the first two years of his priesthood). Saint Timothy’s has been a great blessing to both of us, a blessing for which we are both eternally grateful to God.
           
You will certainly be hearing more from us as we moved forward over the course of these next few weeks. I will tell you that Father Hutter is a good priest, ordained in 1992, and a seasoned pastor, who brings many gifts with him as he comes to Mayfair after 16 years as Pastor of Saint Mary of the Assumption Parish in Phoenixville.  I know you will welcome him with open arms.

Because our final weekend here is Father’s Day weekend, we are planning on a farewell Mass and reception for Father Lane and myself on Sunday June 9, at 12:00 Noon in Saint Timothy’s upper church. I hope you can join us as we celebrate our many blessings and look forward, in hope, to the future.

Know that you and those you love are daily remembered in my Mass and my prayers.

                                                                                    Love and prayers,
                                                                                    Father Olivere